


Dreams of Sun, and Moon, and Stars

by elynross



Category: The Sandman (Comics)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-31
Updated: 2004-12-31
Packaged: 2018-01-25 08:03:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1640402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elynross/pseuds/elynross
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thessaly didn't have much use for men, but Morpheus was not a man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreams of Sun, and Moon, and Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Sanj

 

 

 _Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?_ \--Alfred, Lord Tennyson

 

 

1.

 _This whole creation is essentially subjective, and the dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once: scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience, and critic._ \--Carl Gustav Jung

 

Thessaly didn't have much use for men. Once upon a time in the long ago, as a much younger, more frivolous witch (if one can imagine such a thing), they'd had their uses. Sometimes she almost imagined she'd enjoyed them, but that, thankfully, was in the past. Men were too needy, too prone to a possessiveness that was really quite, quite unwise. Life wasn't big enough, or long enough, to leave room for them, or any unnecessary distraction.

If Thessaly had a goal beyond living as long as possible, it was to learn everything imaginable -- in pursuit of living as long as she could. She'd long known that knowledge is indeed power, the kind of power necessary to stand up against the forces she dealt with, to get them to respond in her favor. She didn't believe in flash, or power simply for power's sake. She believed in staying alive, in preparing for anything that might happen, and in never letting anyone get away with anything, at least insofar as it affected her. You might say she believed revenge was a dish best served steaming hot, possibly not even fully cooked, but she didn't consider it revenge so much as prevention. She strongly believed in capital punishment as deterrent, and in her world, you didn't fuck with a three-thousand-year-old witch if you knew what was good for you. If you didn't know what you were getting into, that was poor planning on your part, and not her concern. Her concern was to make sure it didn't happen again, and so far she was winning.

She made bargains, collected favors, and used them sparingly. She kept to herself, but she made sure she was remembered. And she had no fear, because to her mind, the source of fear was Death, and she didn't fear Death; she just didn't want to make her personal acquaintance.

Thessaly had little use for dreams, either -- especially dreams left free to do as they would. For a time, she'd left them alone, but they were shallow, frivolous things, dangerous. You could lose yourself in dreams, and it was very hard to find your way out, for they were secretive, tricksy creatures. Moreover, they were a waste of time, of which she had little enough. She'd long ago decided to deny them control of any portion of her life, no matter how small, and she'd taken to lucid dreaming like a baby to breathing, and then she'd gone after her dreams, bending them to her will and whipping them into shape. When the dreams themselves complained, she'd gone straight to management, demanding complete control. Such a thing had never happened, and they didn't know how to deal with her -- so that was the first time she met the King of Dreams. Sometimes she thought she'd driven a hard bargain; other times she thought she'd simply amused him, and that...annoyed her. In any case, it had been years since she'd bothered to dream at all.

 

2.

 _Everyone believes very easily whatever they fear or desire._ \--Jean de La Fontaine

 

When they met the second time, Thessaly told Morpheus she was surprised he remembered her, but she lied. She said he wasn't good-looking, he was too thin, and that, too, was a lie, but only halfway, and only to herself, and she never believed her own lies. The truth was he annoyed her, and infuriated her, and thwarted her, and the latter two were so rare in her experience that later, when she thought she loved him, it was easy to believe.

She felt him watching in her dreams well before he came forward, and she let him do so without comment, which was also unusual. When he finally revealed himself, he was cool, and imperious, and clearly displeased to see her again. So she, in turn, was placid, and impervious, and spent too much time pushing her glasses up her nose.

"So," he said. "It has been a very long time since you deigned to visit my realm."

"You've been keeping track," she said, and he blinked at her.

"It is my realm. I would be remiss if I did not pay attention to what transpires."

"Do you often pay visits to individual sleepers?" she asked.

That earned her a look of faint amusement, which did not irritate her as much as she'd expected, and that annoyed her far more.

"You are a most unusual case, as you know."

"Is that a compliment?"

He looked down at her for a moment before nodding. "I suppose it is." He waved a hand and sat in the chair that appeared, waving her into another, which she took with only a brief pause for annoyance at his high-handedness. "You are... not like other people."

"Thank you," she said. And then for quite some time they just sat and looked at each other, and being who they respectively were, this made neither of them uncomfortable.

And as Thessaly looked at him, she saw he was perhaps less pale than originally thought, and while quite thin, he was not entirely unattractive.

And when they began to talk, she found that he could listen as intelligently as he spoke, and that they had many interests in common, and that neither of them had a sense of humor, which made things simpler all around. And she, who was so seldom surprised, was quite a bit so to find that their conversation had lasted the rest of the night, and it was nearly time for her to wake.

He rose, as if to see her home, then spoke in what for him was a most abrupt fashion. "Would you... Would you mind if I came to see you again?"

Thessaly looked up at him and pushed her glasses up her nose. "I'm here most nights," she said, which was another lie, but only in the past.

Morpheus blinked, and looked down his nose at her. "Is that a yes, then?" he asked, almost tentatively.

"If you'd like."

"I think I might," he said, and sounded surprised himself.

 

3.

 _Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs._  
Being purged a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes,  
being vexed a sea nourished with lovers tears,  
What is it else? A madness most discreet,  
A choking gall and a preserving sweet.  
\--William Shakespeare

 

Over the course of many weeks, their conversation continued, and Thessaly increasingly looked forward to her dreams, and was disconcerted at how little this annoyed her. She consoled herself that she was learning a great deal, and was only a little irritated at her inability to believe her lies.

Morpheus, for his part, felt more alive than he had since his captivity, and was at a loss to know why, until the night he asked her to remain in the Dreaming as his guest, and felt a slight giddiness that was most unlike him when she said yes, to their mutual surprise.

Having admitted his passion, and being a creature of whim and fancy, it took him over, and he devoted himself to her pleasure, creating a suite of rooms as perfect as anything a devoted lover's imagination could encompass. He would have showered her with gifts, if that were her desire, but Thessaly had little use for live plants, and even less for dead flowers, never wore jewels, was content to dress plainly, and seldom enjoyed self-indulgence of any sort. So he gave of himself, spending every moment with her, leaving the day-to-day dreamwork to underlings, neglecting even those tasks he normally reserved to himself.

Thessaly found herself caught up and swept away, behaving in a manner quite contrary to her nature, and not even minding. They went for long walks in Fiddler's Green and exchanged such sweet nothings as she would have found quite maudlin at any other time, in any other place, but here, and now, with his starry eyes upon her, they were breathtaking and delightful. He took her sailing in through the Archipelago of Dreams, introduced her to the oldest of phantasies and the youngest of reveries, and discovered new things in his own kingdom as they explored the nooks and crannies of the empire.

And though he had no sense of humor, he found himself laughing more, and knew only that she made him happy, without knowing why. When he was happy, so was his realm, and so, for a period, were all beings who dream, caught up in the love affair of the King of Dreams.

And when they were not abroad in dreams, she lay in the arms of Morpheus and found, as had so many before her, that it was a place of intoxication and rapture. He made love to her robed in black velvet shadows, and as he possessed her, he flowed through her and she went on forever, falling into his dark, star-cored eyes and into the night, and was lost in Dream.

And when he made love to her, he poured himself into her, and she held him. In her he felt his limits, and the edges were sharp and exciting, and he waited to cut himself on them and then bleed for her. For her he would do anything, and there was nothing he would not do, and his love for her was a madness within him.

 

4.

 _Reality can destroy the dream; why shouldn't the dream destroy reality?_ \--George Moore

 

But creation and destruction are inextricably intertwined, and all things end, and even a passion that consumed can vanish in the blink of a waking eye. And dreams, even those of Dream himself, wither and fade when they are no longer sustained.

For a handful of months, Thessaly lived at the burning center of his attentions, and when those waned, she felt the chill. There were beings to personally attend, events requiring his presence, dreams only he could craft, and she was too often alone, accompanied only by the fairy woman who attended her. Some days he would return and it was as it had been, but then he came less and less often and wooed her no longer, for you needn't pursue what you already possess. Or so Thessaly believed.

As for Morpheus, he felt her withdraw, or maybe he woke enough to see she wanted nothing he could give, that she walked the dreamlands alone, seeking the knowledge that was her only true passion, collecting things that had long since left the waking world, surviving only in dreams. That she did not need him. And even the Endless can be hurt.

No longer basking in the light of his love, she realized she did not love him, she had never loved him, and she believed this to be true until the last. And yet she went to speak with him, perhaps with some thought of being proven wrong, but he responded only with silence. And though she believed she knew him well, she didn't see it as the silence of wounded pride, but as disdain, for she had pride of her own. Nor would she have believed, for she knew he remembered only what interested him, and quickly forgot what he did not care to know, and after all, she had never seen him as anything other than rather gloomy and narcissistic.

His continued silence maddened her, so she stepped between him and the dream he was creating, and shouted, "Give me a reason to stay!" and he looked down his nose at her in a manner she felt as dismissive, and he felt as bewilderment.

"Don't you care that I'm angry?" she demanded, and he retreated even more, uncomfortable with such emotional displays, uncertain how to respond, since he'd forgotten the source of her anger, if he'd ever known, and as accomplished as he was at passion, he utterly failed at comfort.

"You find your work more important," she said, and knew it was unfair, but she felt trapped in the dream of another, and could not find her way free.

"I'm leaving," she told him, and having improved her ability to lie to herself, believed his reaction didn't matter.

He shrugged. "As you will," and his voice was as cold as ice, as was his heart.

Later he would say he'd never intended to hurt her, and he would mean it, never understanding that this was, perhaps, worse than having wanted to hurt her very much.

 

5.

 _The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal._ \--C.S. Lewis

It was only after she left that he became aware of how much he had changed -- or how much she had changed him, and those around him. It was not his first time to love, nor his first time to feel its loss, but she was perhaps one of the few who had had no awe of him, who had seen him as something other than the Lord of Dreams. And while how he appeared varied with who was watching, in her presence he had felt change within, something beyond the merely perceptual.

At first, he stayed away from her, and had all traces of her presence wiped from his castle, ordering her rooms destroyed, forbidding even the mention of her in his presence. Still, he knew that she came, from time to time, for she had made friends of some of his attendants, and had developed some ability to walk in dreams without him. He told himself he did not care where she went, or what she did, but the longer he stood in the rain that poured down over his entire realm, the less he was able to believe this.

So after a while, he took to walking in her dreams, although he concealed himself in a way he hadn't, before, and he crafted dreams especially for her, since, being who he was, he knew her dreams far better than anyone else, even better, probably, than Thessaly herself. And what little he thought of them at all, he thought of them as gifts, as when he gave her dreams of her youth, not realizing that she had left her past far behind willingly, and seeing it again was no gift.

And so she came to him again, and her eyes, so dispassionate and empty when she'd left, were angry and contemptuous.

"Stay out of my dreams."

"That is something I cannot do," he lied quietly.

"Of course you can. How like you, though, to refuse to do so, to use your work to excuse your trespasses," she said. "Your selfishness is awe-inspiring. We made a bargain, eons ago, that I would be allowed control of my own dreams, that there would be no sendings I did not craft myself."

And he had nothing he could say to that, so he remained silent.

"You don't want to fuck with me," she said.

"Do you truly think you can hurt me?" he asked.

This time, she spoke quietly, but her words carried deep into his heart. "I think I have hurt you," she said, "which I would not have thought possible. And if I have hurt you before, I can hurt you again." She pushed her glasses up her nose, and stood up. "Leave me alone. Stay out of my dreams. It's not so much to ask, and we have a bargain."

"You ask too much, too soon," he whispered.

And so, once more, she ceased to dream, only coming occasionally to borrow books, when she believed him elsewhere.

 

6.

 _In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing._ \--Robert Green Ingersoll

If he'd had a sense of humor, he'd have seen the irony of Delirium waking him from the madness and despair of vanished love. What he did see was how he had changed, but he couldn't see where it had started. Had falling in love changed him? Or had he changed, and therefore fallen in love?

In either case, Delirium's quest gave him the excuse to contact Desire, the source of his pain, only to find that Desire had not brought Thessaly into his life, nor taken her away. They went to Destiny's garden, and there he found that Thessaly had told true: she had never loved him, and she never would. She would not change, but he already had. He had spoken to Orpheus, his son, and given him the peace of death, after millennia of believing he could do nothing and still remain true to himself. And now he had to ask himself what happened when a dream changed? What if the new dream was beyond the ability of the old self to attain?

After their quest was done, and Delirium had left, Death found Morpheus in the park, feeding pigeons. "We've got to stop meeting like this," she said, sitting down and digging into the bag of seed, scattering it to the mass of waiting birds.

"You would think they'd avoid you," he said.

"Animals are wiser than other creatures," she said. "They remember that they've met me before, and that I am nothing to fear."

"Is that wisdom?"

A pigeon jumped up on her leg to eat out of her hand. "Perhaps."

"Do they fall in love?"

"Do they dream?" she countered, and it earned her a wan smile.

They sat for a few minutes, quiet save for the murmur of the pigeons.

"It hurts," he said quietly. "Have you ever been in love?"

She nodded. "All the time."

"How do you deal with it ending?"

She looked at him and raised an eyebrow. "Nothing lasts forever," she said. "That doesn't mean it ends."

"I... do not understand."

"Love doesn't end. You still love. It wouldn't hurt if you didn't. And when it stops hurting, it's not because love is gone. It's just changed, or moved on, or it's waiting."

He looked up at the sky. "I do not think I want to love again," he said.

She grinned. "Did you mean to fall in love this time?"

"No," he said, and it was true. It had caught him unaware.

"Then why," she asked, "do you think you can stop it happening again? You always fall in love again, because you are Dream," she said. "You can do nothing else."

"What if I want to change?" he asked.

"All things change," she said. "Or they die."

"I'm scared," he said.

"I know," she said, cupping his chin in her palm, turning his head to kiss him softly on the mouth. "But I am with you, always. You have nothing to fear."

And this, too, was love.

 _What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story. And the greatest good is little enough: for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams_ \--Pedro Calderon de la Barca

_fin_

 


End file.
